Chateau Marmont: the castle where Hollywood went to hide its sex, secrets and lies

Perched on a hillside above Hollywood’s fabled Sunset Boulevard, the Chateau Marmont hotel, which celebrates its 90th ­birthday this year, has a history of decadence and excess that is set to be centre stage of a new TV series by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin.

“If you want to get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont,” Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn advised his two young hell-raising stars William Holden and Glenn Ford in 1939. They were happy to oblige.

Back in the days when actors’ contracts came with Draconian morality clauses about how they were allowed to behave in public, Hollywood ­studios kept suites at the Chateau so their A-listers could behave immorally behind closed doors.

Inside its whitewashed walls, beneath its Gothic arches, the stars could enjoy affairs and indulge their appetites, secure in the knowledge that the hotel’s staff had been hand-picked for their discretion and vault-like silence.

Thirties blonde bombshell Jean Harlow was a regular, entertaining a string of lovers, including Gone With The Wind heart-throb Clark Gable.

The screen siren even used the hotel for steamy liaisons with men while on honeymoon with third ­husband, cinematographer Harold Rosson.

Harlow left messages for him at the hotel front desk, saying: “Gone fishing.” And what she was fishing for was fresh flesh to press between her bedsheets.

More recently, according to hotel legend, Scarlett Johansson and Benicio Del Toro couldn’t even wait to get to a room, and were tearing each other’s clothes off in the hotel lift the night before the 2004 Oscars.

Neither has denied the story. Johansson, 34, said to be the world’s highest-paid actress, shrugged it off with: “Apparently there was somebody with us in an elevator and we were having sex or something, which I think is very unsanitary.”

Oscar winner Del Toro, 52, was even less forthcoming, saying: “I kind of like, you know… I… well… I don’t know. Let’s not promote it.”

Pirates Of The Caribbean star Johnny Depp, 55, was more up front.

He claimed that he and then-girlfriend, Kate Moss, 45, made love in all 63 rooms at the Chateau, including its 23 suites and four bungalows.

Hollywood wildman Dennis Hopper needed only one room, ­however, to supposedly enjoy an orgy at the hotel with 50 women.

Errol Flynn bedded his three wives there in quick succession, before adding Marlene Dietrich to his list of conquests.

Love and death seem to have been frequent bed-mates at the Chateau.

Blues Brothers star John Belushi was partying hard in private Bungalow 3 in 1982, when he overdosed and died aged just 33 after taking a “speedball” of heroin and cocaine.

The Doors frontman Jim Morrison came close to dying on several ­occasions, while swinging from the hotel’s rooftops and gutters.

One night the Riders On The Storm singer fell from the roof, supposedly while trying to find a quicker route in and out of his suite.

On another evening Morrison fell as he tried to climb a drainpipe up to his room.

Both times he was so stoned he miraculously escaped serious injury, though Morrison confessed his nights at the hotel used up “the eighth of my nine lives”.

He used up the last life in Paris in 1971, where he died of unknown causes at the age of 27.

The Chateau is where Elizabeth Taylor nursed her close friend Montgomery Clift back to health after his near-fatal car crash in 1956.

Famed German-born fashion photo­grapher Helmut Newton was not so lucky: he died at the hotel in 2004, ­smashing his Cadillac into the driveway wall.

Rebel Without A Cause director Nicholas Ray was living at the Chateau, where he held auditions for the 1955 movie.

It was there the 42-year-old director bedded 16-year-old rising star Natalie Wood.

But Ray still made Wood screen test for the movie.

Her co-star James Dean, also auditioning for Ray, jumped through a window to prove he was scared of nothing.

It must have worked, because he won the role.

Rock stars have had more than their share of scandals there.

Billy Idol trashed his hotel room when room service brought him french fries doused in truffle oil, instead of placing the oil on the side, as he had ordered.

Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham rode his 25th birthday gift, a Harley-Davidson, through the hotel lobby.

That sort of behaviour might get guests ejected from most hotels, but at the Chateau Marmont it barely ­merited a reprimand.

But Britney Spears, 37, got herself banned after smearing food all over her face during a meltdown in 2007, during which she also shaved off her blonde mane to go bald.

The discreet staff might have turned a blind eye, but fellow celebrity diners were so alarmed by her antics that management was left with little choice but to bar her.

Lindsay Lohan made herself an easier target: the troubled actress was banned in 2012 after running up $46,350 on her room service bill for items including cigarettes, iPhone chargers, candles and ­magazines such as Architectural Digest.

The celebrity misbehaviour seems to be in stark contrast to the hotel’s quiet elegance and understated luxury.

Named after the small street that runs along the hotel’s front, the seven-storey ­castle was inspired by the 15th century Chateau d’Amboise, a French royal retreat in the Loire Valley, where King Charles VIII died in 1498 after hitting his head on a door lintel.

The Chateau Marmont opened its doors in 1929, and quickly became a celebrity hang-out, with its large suites filled with vintage sofas and antique furnishings lending it the feel of a country house party retreat.

Its dimly lit wood-beamed lobby still offers the promise of well-­hidden scandal, with the ambiance of a bygone era.

But if these walls could talk, they’d have their own gossip column.

Almost every Hollywood star worthy of the name has stayed there over its nine decades, and many made it their home-from-home.

It was a retreat for notoriously reclusive stars such as Greta Garbo and movie mogul Howard Hughes.

Hughes, whose sexual peccadilloes were legion, spied on women bathing in the hotel pool using high-powered prism binoculars from the eyrie of his penthouse hotel suite.

The Chateau Marmont has also served as a muse for many of Hollywood’s creative giants.

Many beloved screenplays have been penned by writers living at the Chateau, including Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, and Day Of The Locust.

Director Billy Wilder began his Hollywood screenwriting career while ensconced at the Chateau, and sharp-tongued wit Dorothy Parker lived and wrote many of her acidic barbs there.

The hotel has featured in films including last year’s remake of A Star Is Born, 2016 hit La La Land, and 1991 rock biography The Doors.

Sofia Coppola’s languid drama Somewhere was filmed there.

The Chateau has also been immortalised in song by The Grateful Dead and Lily Allen, and in literature by authors including James Ellroy and Charles Bukowski.

But history doesn’t come cheap.

Rooms today start at £350 and you’ll pay £3,870 a night for the two-bedroom penthouse.

Drama and scandal is not included.

That, you’ll have to ­provide for yourself.